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 Legal Education in Modern Japan. He set apart one hour a week, assigned a case (they are all reported briefly) to each student, and asked him to be ready with a statement of it at the hour set. The inten tion was at once to apply to actual Japanese cases the principles acquired in the courses, comparing the results under English law with the results of the court, and' also to familiarize the students with their own juris prudence and with the handling of cases. On the first occasion two or three only were ready; and as the requirement of a brief written syllabus-translation seemed irksome, it was announced that an oral statement would suffice. There followed for five weeks a continuous course of non-preparation on the part of the students. During that time some half-dozen cases in all were prepared, and at its end the class went to the manager and requested that this feature of the course be discontinued; and the instructor was so notified. The reason given by the students was that they could just as well study the cases after they had graduated. This is simply one of dozens of instances. In one respect this ideal is worthy of our notice, for it elevates the process of educa tion to a high plane. Legal education in Japan is not regarded merely as the neces sary preparation for earning a livelihood. It is the devotion of one's time to the acquisi tion of knowledge for its own sake. To become a student is to abandon the sordid career of one who seeks gain in commerce or industry, and to place oneself in the noble ranks of those who prefer wisdom to gold. The traditions of feudalism and Chinese phi losophy have made this the pervading idea in all classes, — gradually losing its hold, to be sure, but still dominant. Comparisons are dangerous; but while I will not say that the proportion of youths pursuing a liberal edu cation is greater, contrasting the families who can afford ft, than in our own country, it may be asserted that a liberal education is in higher conventional esteem by all classes, and that greater sacrifices are made by family and friends to secure it for those who ti

desire it. Records of extreme devotion to this object of respect and ambition are in numerable. I happen to. think at this moment of a young man, the second son of a family in Western Japan, who manages to get along with his monthly salary of fifteen yen in a petty government clerkship and also to support entirely his youngest brother in a private collegiate school in Tokyo. One curious effect of this ideal is the aver sion of students to text-books in the hands of an instructor. What they desire is his individual wisdom. They do not object to using a text-book for the preliminary perusal of a topic (though they elude most attempts to test their familiarity with its chapters), but in the class-room a text-book in any shape is an abomination. A bulging note-book of loose sheets is the passport to their esteem. In law teaching this notion usually coin cides with the methods of the instructor. But in other branches it is often inconsist ent with practical convenience and the needs of the subject, and the expedients to which instructors sometimes feel obliged to resort to elude the wary prejudices of their classes have an amusing side to them. For instance, a gentleman suddenly called to take a course of ethics during the temporary absence of the regular instructor, not having prepared notes of his own, decided to take Martineau's "Types of Ethical Theory " as the basis of the course. But he knew that all the respect and confidence of the students would be for feited if he took the volumes into class. So he kept them religiously in his library; but nevertheless he carried the class, unknown to themselves, through the subject on sub stantially the lines of Martineau. Another instructor (not now in the country), a teacher of long experience here, was once, by the miscarriage of some trunks, left temporarily without his notes at the opening of the term. There was a text-book which would do for a while; but he knew that his fate was sealed if the class discovered him using it. So he had the first two or three chapters copied out in script by an amanuensis; and